The Second Day of Christmas - It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Gorey

The Day after Christmas does not bring 2 turtle doves, instead it brings a wonderful Christmas present from the girlfriend.  I have mentioned Edward Gorey several times in the course of this blog, but did I know that Edward Gorey had a faux tarot deck!  Known as the Fantod Pack*, it is a 20-card deck featuring typical Gorey-esque art and characters, both macabre and mocking.

Pretty awesome.  I took some pictures to show the cards.

I chose to show the cards above, because in typical Gorey fashion (literally), the master of mocking macabre couldn't help but include himself in the deck.  "The Burning Head" looks like something you would actually see a tarot-like deck. It's symbolic: of what I have no idea, but I like it.

Above, I included these cards because the one makes me think of an "after" picture to Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies.  And the urn is a wonderful Gorey touch.  When Gorey places an urn indoors in the home of some wealthy eccentric, you can't help but wonder what, or who, is in it, and they make countless appearances atop pedestals and gates in cemeteries.

Again, I liked these particular cards.  Above, we see the Ecorche, or "the flayed man," but this flayed man has flare.  Just look at that stylish top hat and casual pose.  Look your best, even when you leave your dermis at home!  The flayed man is often seen in Renaissance images like those by da Vinci, showing what lies beneath the skin, namely muscle.  It is a way for artists to know how the body works, what muscles pull what bones, etc., so a life study can be more "natural" and accurate in terms of what our own physiology does mechanically when a subject strikes a pose.  (Reminds me of the "flayed man" sigil of the House Bolton of the Dreadfort - a la George R. R. Martin)  And "The Bundle" is great, because with Gorey you never know - it could be a corpse in there, sure, but it could also be an unwanted gift basket being sunk to the bottom of a lake.

Here is the accompanying book.  They reproduce the right-hand image to be the back side of all the other Fantod Pack cards.

I don't need these faux tarot cards to tell my future - I know I will enjoy looking and reading these cards for many years in the future.  Thank you, Elizabeth!  Merry Christmas!




*"The initial sales of his first four books came to only about 1500 each and he didn't stay with any one publisher very long.  Sometimes he produced his books himself under the Fantod Press imprint.  ("Fantod" is an obscure word, usually used in the plural, meaning willies or fidgets.)" (Wilkin 131).

Wilkin, Karen, ed.  Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey.  New York: Harcourt, 2001.